Mining Resumes at Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

S. Himmelstein

21 January 2018

After a four-year work stoppage, mining operations have resumed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Waste WIPP's continuous mining machine resumes operations. Source: U.S. Department of EnergyIsolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, the nation’s only repository for transuranic waste disposal.

The repository's operations were suspended in 2013 following a fire in an underground vehicle, and, several days later, a non-related radiological event when a waste drum ruptured. Waste emplacement resumed in January 2017 following extensive investigations and the implementation of a stepwise recovery plan to mitigate the source of the contamination, restore the necessary conditions to support operations and incorporate lessons learned from the incidents. This led to the installation of new permanent ventilation and a new exhaust shaft.

A continuous mining machine has begun cutting into panel 8 of the underground salt formation. This phase is scheduled for completion in 2020, by which time more than 112,000 tons of salt will be removed. The panel will contain seven disposal rooms for waste emplacement; each disposal room is 300-feet long, 33-feet wide and 13-feet high.

Panels are mined slightly larger than the desired size to account for the natural movement of salt, which causes mined openings to close. This is the salt rock behavior that will eventually permanently encapsulate the waste.

A 3-D METHOD FOR GAUGING FLOOD IMPACT

According to the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory, flooding causes more damage than any other severe weather-related event, an average of $5 billion per year in the U.S. It kills more people each year than tornadoes, hurricanes or lightning, and it occurs in every U.S. state and territory. It’s a threat experienced worldwide, anywhere that receives rain.

A flood event in Iowa back in 2008 cost $10 billion in damages to the state, prompting the establishment of the Iowa Flood Center (IFC) at the University of Iowa, the first center in the country for advanced flood-related research and education.

Simplified 2-D models are the current state-of-the-art for predicting flood wave propagation, but an IFC team led by UI professor George Constantinescu is creating 3-D non-hydrostatic flood models to more accurately simulate how floods spread across land. These 3-D models can also be used to assess and improve the predictive capabilities of the 2-D models already in use.

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